Estée Klar is founder and executive director of The Autism Acceptance Project, www.taaproject.com. She’s the mother of a young autistic son, Adam. Dr Kristina Chew is an Associate Professor of Classics at Saint Peter's College in Jersey City, NJ. She blogs at http://autism.typepad.com about life with her 13-year-old son, Charlie, who's on the moderate-to-severe end of the autism spectrum. Estée and Kristina explain what acceptance means to parents of children with autism, to children and adults with autism and to the communities in which they all live. They describe the positive changes to their own lives that acceptance brought. But they warn that acceptance is not an easy thing to achieve. They tell us about the things that make the sun shine for them. And they describe the action that they would like to see by government and healthcare systems for more and better support for family caregivers, and children and adults with autism.